Polycarp

[Guest kingdombrat]

I put YES to 1-2-4 meaning number 3 is a NO to Satan being more powerful than God

[Guest kingdombrat]

18 minutes ago, Josheb said:

My bad. Thanks for the clarification. Great! 

 

So these answers to those questions necessitate certain a certain position: there isn't actually a WAR!!! 

 

The Bible uses the language of "war" and "struggle," and conflict but the truth of the matter is the sovereign almighty God has already decided the outcome. It is not actually a war. A valid analogy is that of shooting BBs at an Abram's tank. 

 

That is true biblical eschatology. 

 

Any eschatology not built on that truth is wrong in one way or another.

I understand!

I also understand the Bible clarifies a period where Satan is bound and then released [whether that's spiritual/physical] does not matter, it claims after the Reign, he is allowed for a [short period][which is shorter than the length of time in years for the Reign.   And then after he is allowed to deceive, those people will gather to come against God. 

 

None of that has ever happened because we've never had a period of mass Beheading for Spiritual Matters for those Beheaded to be Rulers on Earth.

 

You and myself won't be part of that.   We will be Resurrected.   We won't be concerned when the Mill Reign takes place.   That [will not] be our gig.   Those people during the Reign will be flesh and blood like we are.   But even today or since 70 A.D. [WE] have never been Ruled by the Beheaded!

Edited May 10, 2021 by kingdombrat

[Guest kingdombrat]

5 minutes ago, Josheb said:

I think you are over-thinking it. It is not complicated. Once the context of GOD and what that word actually means then all the machinations take on a much different meaning than when viewed from the finite creature's finite view of history from within history. Simply put: it is hard to see the picture from inside the frame. Graciously, God has disclosed Himself and because of the Self-revelation of Himself we necessarily understand things much differently than those interested in the calendar. The war is not actually a war. The binding and the releasing aren't actually physical or temporal conditions (there has never been a time when God was not sovereign and there has never been a single fraction of a sliver of a moment when satan was not bound. The whole paradigm that treats war and binding and releasing as if God isn't always sovereignly ruling is a bad eschatology. 

What is to overthink the BEHEADED will RULE with Christ upon Earth during the REIGN?

 

It's never happened.

We know the Beheading will happen, but it has not yet happened.

So, until that happens, they won't be ruling.

 

There is nothing to work out here.   

No Beheading worldwide = No Mill Reign with Christ on Earth!

Edited May 10, 2021 by kingdombrat

[Guest kingdombrat]

Just now, Josheb said:

Sure it has. In fact, it has never not happened.  

 

God is sovereign. 

 

Those words actually have meaning. Eschatology does not start with "Did X happen?" It starts with "The omni-attributed Creator GOD is sovereign!" 

 

 

When most folks say "It has never happened," what they really mean is "It has yet to happen the way I imagine it will happen, the way I interpret scripture, the way my eschatology tells me it will happen," and they say that neglecting the presuppositional truths of scripture (beginning with the omni-attributed God). 

Besides, "It has never happened" is a post hoc argument, not a rational one. It imposes history - secular history - upon scripture and not the other way around. 

In other words: two flaws in one. 

Two flaws in one: a post hoc subjugated view of scripture and an eisegetic view of what has happened. 

On this occasion this happened based on a selective view of the ECF Polycarp. It's neither good eschatology nor good exegetical practice. Have you read my ops on the six problems with Dispensationalism? Apply those same measures to any (and every) eschatology. Eschatologies that compromise God's sovereignty (if if claiming to do otherwise) or any other core doctrine of the faith are weak or incomplete at best and outright wrong at worst. You commendably (and I mean that sincerely) hold to a truly sovereign God. Yaaay!  No just take those truths and think them through to their logically necessary conclusions based on the facts of scripture...... as scripture itself asserts them (not as modernists assert them). 

That will prove Polycarp unnecessary. 

 

God is sovereign. Just think it through. 

hahahahaha I like that!

 

It has happened in the sense it is Predestined, but we're still waiting for it to literally play out in God's perfect timing!

[Guest kingdombrat]

AMEN!

[David1701]

1 hour ago, kingdombrat said:

hahahahaha I like that!

 

It has happened in the sense it is Predestined, but we're still waiting for it to literally play out in God's perfect timing!

Hmm, well, it is only people who are said to be predestined, in the Bible; and, what has not happened yet cannot be said to have happened, it can only be said that it will happen (from our perspective).

[Guest kingdombrat]

18 hours ago, Josheb said:

Yep. But that is not the only way it has happened. Again I reiterate: There has never been a time when God is not sovereignly omni-attributed and ruling accordingly. NEVER! Similarly, there has never been a time when satan was not bound. 

Satan was first bound by sin. The wages of sin is death. Lucifer sinned. He died. He did not have a special dispensation  to escape the law of sin and death. He died and instantly became bound accordingly. There has never been a time when satan was not bound! BUT! he was also bound by God the moment he rebelled. Not only did he fall from heaven but...

Jude 1:5-7
"Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.  And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,  just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire." 

Any and all eschatology that denies that fact - the fact of scripture - is a bad eschatology. Whatever binding and loosing scripture speaks of elsewhere ALL occur within the context of his deadly bondage and enslavement to sin AND his having been kept in eternal bonds for the day of judgment. You do understand what the word "eternal" means, yes? There has NEVER been a time when satan was not bound! 

So it  has happened. And it happened exactly as scripture said it would happen when the scriptures are defined using other scripture. 
 

No, most of Christendom is not waiting for the kinds of predictions false teachers constantly foist upon the ekklesia. Modern futurism has a 100% fail-rate. Not a single prediction made in the last 200 years has ever come true. They are all - every single one of them - false teachers. 

Literally  

What remains is simple: examine the differences between "this age" versus "the age to come;" and "the last days," versus "the last day," and what remains is fairly easily discerned. 

Literally. 

So you believe this is a repetitive action more than once, maybe more than twice?

[Guest kingdombrat]

35 minutes ago, Josheb said:

I don't "think;" I know. Not only do I know it but my knowledge is not based on my personal opinion or any personal interpretation of scripture. The knowing or knowledge is based on the clearly stated and often repeated facts of scripture. I want to be clear here because I am not asserting Idealism, idealist eschatology. 

I don't know whether you're familiar with Idealism because while it is one of the five major eschatological views held in Christendom historically, it is a minority view. It is the view that the conditions of scripture, especially the eschatological one, occur and reoccur in cycles and every generation sees these conditions and and must address their iteration of those events relevant to the age in which that generation lives. Anyone can hold that view in part, including Premillennialists, Amillennialists, and Postmillennialists, but only in part. It's similar to the point I often make about preterism: technically every Christian is preterist simply because we believe the messianic prophesies are fulfilled in Christ! That is not the same as believing all end-time prophesies are fulfilled in or by or immediately subsequent to the incarnation. 

History does repeat itself. 

That is a fact. It is a fact of reality, a fact of history, and most importantly a fact that is thoroughly scriptural. God used history itself to communication spiritual truths and reality. "History" as we perceive it does not exist for God. It does not exist for the eternal Creator who exists outside of time. The Uncaused Cause created time. 

History is a device for God. 

Not the other way around. 

And when Christians consider these facts that informs eschatology (along with other doctrines). 

 

 

So..... tribulations come and go. There are many in the Bible. There have been many after 70 AD. Between now and the end of time or the end of all ages there will be other tribulations. 

That does not mean the tribulation about which Jesus was speaking in Matthew 24 "is a repetitive action more than once, maybe more than twice," and nothing I am posting should be construed to say such a thing. 

You, kingdombrat, have cited the beheaded ruling and that has been asserted as a still-future event whereby you apparently look for some episode where Christians are actually literally beheaded, having their literal heads literally removed from their literal bodies as a literal event in literal history. 

Correct me if I have that wrong. 

Because there are several problems with that reading of Revelation 20:4, beginning with the fact royal priestly adopted sons and daughters of the sovereignly Sovereign and omni-attributed almighty God have been ruling since that day of great victory one at Calvary was empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and any eschatology that does not include or stand firmly upon that foundation is a bad eschatology. 

 

 

I keep bringing it back to core precepts. I keep bringing this discussion back to the foundation, the presuppositional truths upon which ALL - including eschatology - is built. And I will continue to do so. We may disagree in the end regarding our eschatological conclusions but there should be absolutely no disagreement over the foundational matters. 

• God is sovereign and almighty.
• God's being sovereign and almighty informs ALL mentions of both rule and bondage. 
• History repeats itself but prophesy is about a specific even in what we call history. 
• Those specific events also exist within the context of God's ontology.

These four truths actually govern eschatology. I have mentioned others but I'm trying to start small and work outward. I am intentionally working with the basics, the foundational truths and precepts  upon which I hope we can agree. 

 

 

So....... relevant to the question I was just asked...... No, I do not believe the beheading(s) of Revelation 20:4 are a "repetitive action." Likewise, while the facts of history is such that war and wars are in fact a repetitive action, the beheadings described in Rev. 20 are a past event - future for the original readers, past for the modern believer. Similarly, any and all mentions of "war" occur within specific contexts both explicitly and indirectly stated in scripture. The same thing applies to "reign," and "rule," and "bondage." Because God is God there is no actual war. Any perception on our part of any conflict as a "war" occurs solely and inextricably because we are finite creatures looking at the picture from within the frame. 

And it is very common for such creatures to misread scripture. 

And that goes all the way back to the ECFs.

We do not find much mention of the "millennium reign" among the ECFs but we do find plenty of content wherein they believed Jesus was reigning. That is what they believed. That can be demonstrably proven, not just evidenced, without refutation. I believe I have already provided a couple of examples from different ECFs to that effect. 

Yet there remains in modern times many Christians who deny Jesus is currently reigning. I just had a conversation with another poster in another op who openly stated Jesus is not currently operating in his kingship at the moment. If Jesus is God then there has NEVER been a time when he was not King and NEVER a time when he was not operating in his kingship. The disparity is impossible to maintain in light of who and what Jesus is and has always been. 

 

I am simply asking you to think in similar manner. 

(apologies for the length)

I completely agree that history repeats itself much like the history within the Word of God has repeated itself.  But outside of Noah's Flood, maybe the several times the Hebrews were enslaved, what real catastrophic Tribulations took place?

 

The 70 A.D. Event is no Tribulation, it was a simple slaughter that the enemy came in and butchered them.   There was no time for suffering like a real Tribulation relates to a period of time.   The gist of the Battle was done and over within months.   That's typical of ANY WAR. That is a far cry to classify a [slaughter] as a Tribulation!   

Edited May 11, 2021 by kingdombrat

[Guest kingdombrat]

And remember, most of the Apostles, James, and few others were already out of the picture well before Rome came in and did its thing.   Kind of reminds me of when we liberated Kuwait.   Once we showed up, Iran/Iraq knew they were about to be slaughtered and backed off Kuwait [Bush 1 had us out of there in no time].

Edited May 11, 2021 by kingdombrat

[Guest kingdombrat]

And if you're looking for a [Real Tribulation](associated with WAR), look at Bush 2 with Cheney owning Haliburton.   It's estimated between body bags, insurance policies, meals, necessities, flags representing death of Fallen Soldiers that dick Cheney made more money + the USA Manufacturing made Billions of Dollars that we've just finally brought troops back after 27 years.   And then we can look at Afghanistan under Obama.   Now that's a [Real Tribulation] that the Muslims suffered for the past 30 years.

 

The 70 A.D. event is child's play to what we did to the Muslims!

Edited May 11, 2021 by kingdombrat